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POLITICO 44

A series of recent controversies — capped by Friday’s decision to pull a key 9/11 trial out of Manhattan — is prompting Republicans to turn up the pressure on President Barack Obama, by resurrecting the kind of “soft on terrorism” charge that has dogged Democrats in the past.

Obama largely escaped any controversy over terrorism in the 2008 campaign, because voters were so focused on the economic crisis and because many were supportive of Obama’s plans to break from the Bush-era war on terror, by ending the Iraq war and shutting down Guantanamo Bay prison.

But a series of stumbles in recent weeks has given Republicans a chance to renew that line of attack against Obama, at a time when he’s already confronting public criticism of his handling of the economy and health care.

The GOP has leapt on Obama’s handling of the Christmas Day bombing plot, saying he was slow to speak to the public about the initial attack and criticizing the Justice Department’s decision to try the suspect in a civilian court, not a military one. Republicans also are criticizing the Justice Department for an FBI decision to end questioning of the suspect, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, after less than an hour and read him his Miranda rights.

That came on top of the congressional uproar over Obama’s plan to close Guantanamo Bay prison by moving the detainees to U.S. prisons. Obama missed a self-imposed one-year deadline to close the facility. Republicans also criticized the Justice Department’s decision to send five alleged 9/11 plotters to trial in Manhattan, just blocks from the World Trade Center site — a decision the administration abruptly abandoned Friday after powerful Democrats came out against the New York venue.

“It’s the death of a thousand self-inflicted cuts,” said Peter Feaver, a National Security Council official under presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton. “Conservatives like Vice President Cheney have been making the critique from the beginning but it did not stick until the self-inflicted wounds reached a culmination point.. I think they did with the underwear bomber. Prior to that the self-inflicted wounds were separated. They didn’t congeal into a single story line, but now I think they have.”

Republicans howled after Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said “the system worked” because passengers on the plane jumped on the Abdulmutallab. And the head of the National Counterterrorism Center, Michael Leiter, went on a ski vacation shortly after the attack.

“The terrain changed on them with the Christmas bombing. It provided, fairly or unfairly, Exhibit A for what the critics on the right ... were arguing: that by not taking terrorism seriously, you make America more vulnerable. Mirandizing [Abdulmutallab] plays right into that. ‘The system worked’ plays into that. Having someone take a vacation for a week plays right into it,” Feaver said.

GOP stalwarts like Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) have been pummeling Obama over these issues since last spring, when the White House badly misjudged congressional sentiment and lost a series of votes related to closing the Guantanamo Bay prison.

Now even mild-mannered Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), hardly a partisan bomb-thrower, is joining the parade of GOP lawmakers taking Obama and his team to task.

“Less than one hour. That’s right, less than one hour. In fact, just 50 minutes. That’s the amount of time that the FBI spent questioning Abdulmutallab, the foreign terrorist who tried to blow up a plane on Christmas Day,” Collins said dramatically in the Republicans’ weekly radio and Internet address Saturday morning. “How did the Obama administration decide to treat a foreign terrorist, who had tried to murder hundreds of people, as if he were a common criminal?”

The White House is pushing back on the GOP’s attacks against closing Gitmo, with spokesman Ben LaBolt saying it’s a “national security imperative” backed by Gen. David Petraeus and other military leaders who see it as a recruiting tool for Al Qaeda.

Some critics of closing Guantanamo doubt that the administration’s stumbling will do long-term political damage because, they believe, Obama is gradually turning away from his initial approach.

If the messiah's stance on countering terrorism is so popular...................why did he fail to mention it during his State of Denial speech? Making America weaker, emboldening terrorists, and throwing some bones to the filthy trial lawyers. What a naive human being!

Americans know when they see someone hard on terrorists and those who are soft on terrorists. Americans also know soft Liberals and Liberal appeasement and pacifism when they see it.

The majority of Americans want terrorists treated like crap and then hung with pig guts. This is a center-right nation. Something the Liberals are finding out now in election after election and will find out even more as time goes on.

The President never learns. Obama assails Republicans, then urges bipartisan effort. What a complete idiot Obama is.

This is clear evidence that he's hit a roadblock. Libtards define bipartisanship when all opposition bends over and take one for their twisted cause. If the elimination of welfare and the death tax were at stake, under a gop controlled white house, congress, and senate.........................how many libtards would show bipartisanship?

No government run health care................now or ever!!

And any more spending needs to be the result of libtard partisanship. Let them go down with the ship they've set afire.

Oh, and hey Zero - have you figured out where to try the terrorists yet? You gave us a laundry list of reasons why it had to be in NYC so either you were wrong then, but hadn't figured it out yet, or you are still wrong and just now figured it out.

So "fear" is their last card? Seriously Republicans need to hold their leaders accountable, they have made their party into a National joke. We were not afraid on Election Day, what makes The Party of NO, think that we'll be afraid this time around?

Afetr Obama beat up on the Rethugs on their own turf, this Right-wing website(POLITICO) couldn't take it and had to run this made-up headline. We will expose POLITICO for what it really is...an arm of the Republican Party.

After Obama beat up on the Rethugs on their own turf, this Right-wing website(POLITICO) couldn't take it and had to run this made-up headline. We will expose POLITICO for what it really is...an arm of the Republican Party.

After Obama beat up on the Rethugs on their own turf, this Right-wing website(POLITICO) couldn't take it and had to run this made-up headline. We will expose POLITICO for what it really is...an arm of the Republican Party.

Why is it that most Democrats are homosexual? Democrat men want want to be women. They sure act like it and they love to coddle terrorists while trying to go after our fighters on the front lines and other Americans.